How Web Pages Work and Your First HTML File

When you open a website, your browser asks a server for a file, receives it, and displays it. For a simple page, that file is written in HTML (HyperText Markup Language). HTML is not a programming language. It is a way to mark up text so the browser knows what each part is: a heading, a paragraph, a link, an image.

What you need

• A web browser (Chrome, Edge, Firefox or Safari)
• A text editor. Notepad works, but VS Code (free) is nicer

Create your first page

1. Create a folder called my-first-page.
2. Inside it, create a file named index.html.
3. Paste this in and save:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
  <head>
    <meta charset="UTF-8">
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
    <title>My First Page</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <h1>Hello, world!</h1>
    <p>This is my first web page.</p>
  </body>
</html>

4. Double-click index.html. It opens in your browser.

What each part does

• <!DOCTYPE html> tells the browser this is modern HTML.
• <html> wraps the entire page.
• <head> holds information about the page (title, character set) that is not shown on it.
• <title> is the text on the browser tab.
• <body> holds everything visitors see.
• <h1> is the main heading and <p> is a paragraph.

Most elements have an opening tag (<p>) and a closing tag (</p>) with the content between them.

Your task

Change the heading and paragraph to be about you, save, and refresh the browser to see the change.